Well, we survived the Mondo Winter Storm Events in good order. Other people around Western Washington were not so lucky and loads of trees fell, closing roads and squashing homes, people, cars, and power lines. People got chased away and warned away for sledding down Queen Anne Hill. Big fines for sledding on city hills. Most of them didn't have sleds and the sled-substitutes were fun to see, but I do agree it's dangerous. In other places when there are snow warnings, people stock up on milk, bread and toilet paper, blankets and space heaters. Around here, it's huumus and salsa. Truly. It was in the Sunday paper. Ron Judd's "The Wrap".
There are still some people without power, and I am so sorry for them. It's been so cold.
It is warming up now and the snow in our yard is 99.9% gone. Unfortunately, it got cold enough to cause black ice from all the melt water runoff and even our neighbor got caught by ice this am. She escaped without injury to herself or her car, but she sure got a heart rate boost out of spinning thru an intersection. Yike!
Today has been sunny and in the mid 40s and so that's a treat for January. Norman has spent all day outside soaking up the sun. On the deck, as he does not like laying around in wet grass. He's a sensible dog and sticks to the nice dry deck.
Our downspouts froze solid and that was interesting when the rain came along. Poor ol' Ray's gloves got full of ice water before the job of clearing ice cores out of the downspouts was done. What a mess!
We're still trying to find a place to store the mh in a secure place. We don't want it in the driveway to suffer the fate of another mh we saw up at the dealership. (extreme vandalism costing the owner $70,000 to repair--and the mh was parked next to the owner's home) Better to have it inside a nice tall fence and patrolled. Golly people want a lot of money for a secure mh parking spot.
On MLK weekend we went out to Pacific Beach with Brett and Alayne. We had good times in spite of Alayne having a migrane all weekend. She was such a trooper and still played games. Brett once again, cooked and It Was Good. It snowed several inches on Friday night, and that snow stayed all weekend. If we'd planned on staying over Monday night, we would not have gotten home until the next Friday or Saturday because that's how long it would have taken to get the roads in between Pac Beach and home cleared out. That would have been fun! But then Ray would have spent vacation days on snow days that the office was closed, so I guess it's ok we came home. We were in the house all week anyway. Ray got cabin fever, I did not.
Justin has a permanent job at PSE that he starts on the 25th! Yay, Justin! I am sure it's a huge relief for him. It was for his father and I.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Sleeping With the Big Trucks
Arrival in Santa Nella about sunset brought us to a choice of two huge, overstuffed truck stops. We investigated one and decided we really didn't want to be stuffed in there with the trucks. After much mulling we spotted a truck parked in a large restaurant parking lot. I mean the lot was large, and not the restaurant, which was a normal sized Carl's Jr./Green Burrito. We went over to see if it was ok for us to park there overnight and the restaurant people were very gracious about it. Yes, we were welcome to stay over. So we ate Carl's to reward them.
By the time we finished up and took the leftovers out for Norm (he adores fries) there were 3 big trucks parked out there and soon we were joined by a couple more. Everyone was quiet and we enjoyed an evening of Kindle-ing. There were even nice grassy areas to walk Norman. I am sure he enjoyed it after so much sand and dirt. We crawled into our bed and snugged down for the night. We slept pretty well with the trucks. None of them left until early in the am, so we got many hours of solid sleep. The only uncomfortable part was having to crawl in and out of bed, and the general squashed-ness of the motor home by the bathroom door. Enough to get in and out of the bathroom, but not roomy. I have to admit, I kinda got a kick out of taking a shower in the Carl's lot. Silly, isn't it? We mostly used our own shower on the trip home. It was SO cold outside at 0 Dark:30, which is when we had to get up, according to Ray, who is Road Boss. Before sunrise! Sheesh! I tell you, that part is no fun. I don't like to get up before the sun.
The next day we drove past Shasta and saw 2 lenticular clouds and a quarter moon. I tried to take pictures, but Ray says most of them were lovely pictures of the window screen. But we did stop at a rest area and take some Shasta pics. It's always nice to get thru the mountains and over the Summit before dark. We came upon our scheduled place of rest about 2:30 and decided it was too early to stop, pressed on to the Valley of the Rogue State Park south of Grant's Pass. It's a beautiful park between the Rogue River and the Interstate 5. We chose a spot near the river and the sound of the traffic blended into the sound of the river until all we heard was river. In this place, we had plenty of room to spread our wings for the evening and we did remember to turn on the furnace. Everyone slept like rocks. That featherbed substitute is a good thing.
Thursday we drove only as far as Chehalis and stayed overnight in a Thousand Trails campground some miles removed from the freeway and up a mountainside. It's one of those places where if you don't know where it is, you will not find it. By the time we got there, it was dark and we rejected the first site we tried as being too slanty. Then we tried another but it was too short, so then we got out with the flashlights and started hunting a level, long spot without trees encroaching too much so we could spread out. Found one, serenaded by coyotes again! That surprised me, as I thought we'd left them all in AZ. Guess not.
The living room slide out refused to slide out. It refused to do anything. It seems the entire circuit died that powers that slide. Ray checked all the breakers and fuses and could not find anything blown. So that's a mystery for the repair guys. If one of the slides had to fail, I'd rather it was that one. We had plenty of room to move around and Norman enjoyed the couch eye view of the dinner table.
Sent off to sleep by coyote and owl serenade, we woke refreshed, cleaned up the motor home, packed things away and headed for home. We got here about 1 and missed the afternoon traffic. We had some lunch, and unloaded the motor home. I finally decided to take out the canned goods lest they freeze, but left the dry things in there. We were worn out by the time we were done and it was dark by then anyway. We scrounged around for supper, vegged out with tv and headed for our own familiar bed for a good night's sleep.
Ray has made a list of things for warranty work and we're scheduled to drop it off on Friday morning. McMahon's is, as we suspected, dragging it's feet on agreeing to pay for the damage to the hood that it had when we arrived. I wish they'd just give in and we'd all be done with each other.
Norman turns out to be a wonderful motor homing dog. He loves the motor home, loves to ride, loves to get out and smell new things, loves to look out the big front windshield and watch the world go by. Plus, he's very well behaved when he gets out of the mh. Perhaps he is afraid we'll leave him at the rest area if he doesn't behave. Whatever reason, I'm glad of it.
Cooking in this motor home is so much easier than in the old motor home we had 20 years ago. So much more space and countertop to work with. We were pleased with the results of cooking in the convection oven/microwave. Those are good additions to motor homes. Garbage disposals have to be next on the list, but with Norm along, I admit we did not have much garbage.
Our van now feels small when we drive it! But this Friday after we drop off the motor home, we will pack up the van and head for our annual weekend in Pacific Beach. We rented a house this year and Brett and Alayne will be joining us. I hope Brett's cooking again this year!
We've decided to put all the trip pics up in one post, if we can find any that actually turned out. Stay tuned!
By the time we finished up and took the leftovers out for Norm (he adores fries) there were 3 big trucks parked out there and soon we were joined by a couple more. Everyone was quiet and we enjoyed an evening of Kindle-ing. There were even nice grassy areas to walk Norman. I am sure he enjoyed it after so much sand and dirt. We crawled into our bed and snugged down for the night. We slept pretty well with the trucks. None of them left until early in the am, so we got many hours of solid sleep. The only uncomfortable part was having to crawl in and out of bed, and the general squashed-ness of the motor home by the bathroom door. Enough to get in and out of the bathroom, but not roomy. I have to admit, I kinda got a kick out of taking a shower in the Carl's lot. Silly, isn't it? We mostly used our own shower on the trip home. It was SO cold outside at 0 Dark:30, which is when we had to get up, according to Ray, who is Road Boss. Before sunrise! Sheesh! I tell you, that part is no fun. I don't like to get up before the sun.
The next day we drove past Shasta and saw 2 lenticular clouds and a quarter moon. I tried to take pictures, but Ray says most of them were lovely pictures of the window screen.
Thursday we drove only as far as Chehalis and stayed overnight in a Thousand Trails campground some miles removed from the freeway and up a mountainside. It's one of those places where if you don't know where it is, you will not find it. By the time we got there, it was dark and we rejected the first site we tried as being too slanty. Then we tried another but it was too short, so then we got out with the flashlights and started hunting a level, long spot without trees encroaching too much so we could spread out. Found one, serenaded by coyotes again! That surprised me, as I thought we'd left them all in AZ. Guess not.
The living room slide out refused to slide out. It refused to do anything. It seems the entire circuit died that powers that slide. Ray checked all the breakers and fuses and could not find anything blown. So that's a mystery for the repair guys. If one of the slides had to fail, I'd rather it was that one. We had plenty of room to move around and Norman enjoyed the couch eye view of the dinner table.
Sent off to sleep by coyote and owl serenade, we woke refreshed, cleaned up the motor home, packed things away and headed for home. We got here about 1 and missed the afternoon traffic. We had some lunch, and unloaded the motor home. I finally decided to take out the canned goods lest they freeze, but left the dry things in there. We were worn out by the time we were done and it was dark by then anyway. We scrounged around for supper, vegged out with tv and headed for our own familiar bed for a good night's sleep.
Ray has made a list of things for warranty work and we're scheduled to drop it off on Friday morning. McMahon's is, as we suspected, dragging it's feet on agreeing to pay for the damage to the hood that it had when we arrived. I wish they'd just give in and we'd all be done with each other.
Norman turns out to be a wonderful motor homing dog. He loves the motor home, loves to ride, loves to get out and smell new things, loves to look out the big front windshield and watch the world go by. Plus, he's very well behaved when he gets out of the mh. Perhaps he is afraid we'll leave him at the rest area if he doesn't behave. Whatever reason, I'm glad of it.
Cooking in this motor home is so much easier than in the old motor home we had 20 years ago. So much more space and countertop to work with. We were pleased with the results of cooking in the convection oven/microwave. Those are good additions to motor homes. Garbage disposals have to be next on the list, but with Norm along, I admit we did not have much garbage.
Our van now feels small when we drive it! But this Friday after we drop off the motor home, we will pack up the van and head for our annual weekend in Pacific Beach. We rented a house this year and Brett and Alayne will be joining us. I hope Brett's cooking again this year!
We've decided to put all the trip pics up in one post, if we can find any that actually turned out. Stay tuned!
Monday, January 2, 2012
Relaxation
means you are so relaxed and enjoying sitting in the sun so much that you don't blog for 2 days! We had a grand time in Verde Valley, just sitting in the afternoon sun and enjoying the breeze. Norman seemed to enjoy it too. We fixed all our meals in the motor home as we were waaay out in the country, but that was ok. Ray helped by drying the dishes which was much appreciated by the cook/dishwasher.
We had some shade from a kind of tree unfamiliar to me. It had sort of maple-shaped small to medium sized leaves and white thin bark that flaked off the tree. There were quite a few of those trees on the lower rows where we chose to park. We saw bunnies one day, but luckily Norman didn't. He behaves so well away from home that it's hard to believe he's the same dog we live with day to day. We should stay on the road.
One night it got down to 37 in the motorhome because we forgot to turn on the furnace when we went to bed and brrrrrr! I don't know about Norman, but MY nose was cold! Lucky for me, Ray woke up first and turned on the heat! We didn't know it got so cold in Arizona. It frosted the three nights we spent at Verde Valley. But it warmed up so nicely it was worth freezing.
Today we passed an area named Fort Rock, in Arizona close to the border with California. Those were stacked rocks, like on the train ride at Disneyland. But even bigger. The formation went on for miles on both sides of the freeway. Fascinating!
We saw a sign on highway 89 that said, "Coyote Wash" and I wish I could have taken a picture for my brother in law Ron. He'd have done something funny with that picture, I just know it. Sorry, Ron! Maybe next time. Ron didn't tell me that they washed the coyotes down here. (yeah, I know what a wash is. That was a joke, people)
At the California border crossing there is always an obligatory fruit and vegetable checkpoint and today on I-40 was no exception. We were forced to declare that the entire motor home contained no fruits and veggies unless they wanted to count potato chips. Disgraceful, eh?
But, we had stopped at Subway for lunch at a truck stop and so we did actually eat something moderately healthy and vegetable containing. Yay, us! And thank you, Robin, for the Subway cards! We got our sandwiches to go and ate in the motorhome. It was much quieter than in the busy restaurant. And we kept Norm company. Poor thing suffers from separation anxiety and moreover, hates to miss out on good food.
Immediately after leaving vegetable check, the road went to pot in a big way. And after we bounced, rattled and jerked along the badly deteriorated highway for about 5 miles, we came upon a sign announcing "Rough Road". Ha. Too late. Although Ray says the sign should say, "Rough Road Throughout Entire State".
We had a short day today, only getting as far as Needless, I mean Needles, CA. We're at a very nice RV Park called Desert View. It's manicured to within an inch of it's life and every site is level and well-gravelled and had a nice big concrete patio. All the roads are concrete. All the amenities are here even wireless in the rv. We are actually on part of Historic Route 66! The mother road!
Ray and Norm sat outside while I fixed dinner. It was a new recipe from the convection oven book, Tamale Casserole. It has potential, for sure, but tasted fine to hungry people. And we have enough to have dinner tomorrow. Everyone is very friendly here and about talks your ears off. Everyone else is here for the winter. There are only 2 spots for overnighters right now. I am glad we made reservations.
Tomorrow we are going as far as Santa Nella on I-5. We will be spending our first night with the big trucks at a truck stop. No hookups and no unfurling our wings. If we don't get our undies out of the drawers tomorrow morning, there will be no clean undies the next day. Got to plan ahead in these motorhomes! We may or may not have wifi tomorrow night, it all depends on the truck stop. But we will be getting in late and leaving early and we have ear plugs so I think we'll do ok sleeping. Norm may have a rough night, as we have no dog ear plugs. Do they make those?
So if you don't hear from us tomorrow night, don't worry. We're fine, just roughing it in our squeezed in motorhome.
We had some shade from a kind of tree unfamiliar to me. It had sort of maple-shaped small to medium sized leaves and white thin bark that flaked off the tree. There were quite a few of those trees on the lower rows where we chose to park. We saw bunnies one day, but luckily Norman didn't. He behaves so well away from home that it's hard to believe he's the same dog we live with day to day. We should stay on the road.
One night it got down to 37 in the motorhome because we forgot to turn on the furnace when we went to bed and brrrrrr! I don't know about Norman, but MY nose was cold! Lucky for me, Ray woke up first and turned on the heat! We didn't know it got so cold in Arizona. It frosted the three nights we spent at Verde Valley. But it warmed up so nicely it was worth freezing.
Today we passed an area named Fort Rock, in Arizona close to the border with California. Those were stacked rocks, like on the train ride at Disneyland. But even bigger. The formation went on for miles on both sides of the freeway. Fascinating!
We saw a sign on highway 89 that said, "Coyote Wash" and I wish I could have taken a picture for my brother in law Ron. He'd have done something funny with that picture, I just know it. Sorry, Ron! Maybe next time. Ron didn't tell me that they washed the coyotes down here. (yeah, I know what a wash is. That was a joke, people)
At the California border crossing there is always an obligatory fruit and vegetable checkpoint and today on I-40 was no exception. We were forced to declare that the entire motor home contained no fruits and veggies unless they wanted to count potato chips. Disgraceful, eh?
But, we had stopped at Subway for lunch at a truck stop and so we did actually eat something moderately healthy and vegetable containing. Yay, us! And thank you, Robin, for the Subway cards! We got our sandwiches to go and ate in the motorhome. It was much quieter than in the busy restaurant. And we kept Norm company. Poor thing suffers from separation anxiety and moreover, hates to miss out on good food.
Immediately after leaving vegetable check, the road went to pot in a big way. And after we bounced, rattled and jerked along the badly deteriorated highway for about 5 miles, we came upon a sign announcing "Rough Road". Ha. Too late. Although Ray says the sign should say, "Rough Road Throughout Entire State".
We had a short day today, only getting as far as Needless, I mean Needles, CA. We're at a very nice RV Park called Desert View. It's manicured to within an inch of it's life and every site is level and well-gravelled and had a nice big concrete patio. All the roads are concrete. All the amenities are here even wireless in the rv. We are actually on part of Historic Route 66! The mother road!
Ray and Norm sat outside while I fixed dinner. It was a new recipe from the convection oven book, Tamale Casserole. It has potential, for sure, but tasted fine to hungry people. And we have enough to have dinner tomorrow. Everyone is very friendly here and about talks your ears off. Everyone else is here for the winter. There are only 2 spots for overnighters right now. I am glad we made reservations.
Tomorrow we are going as far as Santa Nella on I-5. We will be spending our first night with the big trucks at a truck stop. No hookups and no unfurling our wings. If we don't get our undies out of the drawers tomorrow morning, there will be no clean undies the next day. Got to plan ahead in these motorhomes! We may or may not have wifi tomorrow night, it all depends on the truck stop. But we will be getting in late and leaving early and we have ear plugs so I think we'll do ok sleeping. Norm may have a rough night, as we have no dog ear plugs. Do they make those?
So if you don't hear from us tomorrow night, don't worry. We're fine, just roughing it in our squeezed in motorhome.
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